Endless yellow sand and a scorching sun.
In a desert capable of baking a person unconscious, a young figure dressed in white martial arts attire trudged along, stepping deep and shallow into the sand.
"What on earth is this ghost of a place? Am I even still in the country?" Li Fusheng no longer had the strength to curse aloud. But in his mind, he muttered incessantly: "Spiritual Energy Recovery was just about to begin. Did I survive not falling to my death only to die in this wasteland?"
Two weeks ago, during the holidays, he and several college roommates—along with a roommate's girlfriend—went to visit his roommate's hometown, a remote mountain village.
As a result, they accidentally sensed and absorbed a faint trace of spiritual energy deep in the mountains.
Upon returning to school, Li Fusheng immediately decided to suspend his studies and set off for deeper, more primitive forests to seek out a so-called immortal destiny.
Li Fusheng was an unordained Daoist priest, or more accurately, a cultivator. The Li family ancestors could be traced as far back as the Qin Dynasty. His family possessed certain hereditary traditions regarding Qi Condensation and immortality cultivation.
Yet, as the spiritual energy between heaven and earth dissipated, cultivators had long since become the stuff of legend, and the Li family had transformed into a lineage of traditional Daoist priests.
By Li Fusheng's generation, cultivation was still entirely out of reach. Nevertheless, the family's traditional Qi Condensation arts still possessed the benefits of strengthening the physique and promoting longevity.
Naturally, he had practiced since childhood and yearned deeply for the soaring, unfettered cultivators from his grandfather's stories.
The moment he genuinely sensed the so-called spiritual energy in the environment, he instantly convinced himself that it wouldn't be long before spiritual energy recovered just like in the novels, and the age of immortality cultivation would descend once more.
Thus came his decision to suspend his studies and head deep into the remote mountains and old forests—places most likely to see the earliest emergence of spiritual energy—to await the Spiritual Energy Recovery.
With the changing times, even with official government monitoring, some chaos was bound to break out. Whoever could seize the opportunity fastest when the great era arrived would find it much easier to achieve accomplishments others could only chase in vain.
The deep, secluded forests of the Kunlun Mountains were his chosen prime location. After all, in fantasy cultivation novels, the depictions of Kunlun were never simple.
Furthermore, it was one of the few places not yet mapped out as a scenic tourist spot.
Yet, barely three days after his arrival, while searching for edible food, he stepped into empty space and plummeted from a high drop.
When he woke up, apart from a slightly aching back and a somewhat heavy chest, he had suffered no other injuries.
Despite the harsh environment and the endless expanse of the desert, Li Fusheng felt no fear. Instead, he concluded that he must have entered a legendary Secret Realm.
After all, the novels made it very clear: when spiritual energy recovered, hidden secret realms of the past would manifest into the world as well.
And a secret realm was one of the crucial starting points for cultivators striving to reach the ultimate heights.
Yet after walking for two days, while he did sense spiritual energy far richer than what he had felt in the mountains earlier, he failed to find a single drop of water or morsel of food.
Having absorbed spiritual energy, his stamina was greater than an ordinary person's, and he could endure hunger longer, but he was still a far cry from complete fasting.
By now, he had reached his body's absolute limit, and his vision was beginning to blur.
Having finally waited for the Spiritual Energy Recovery, only to die in this nameless wasteland before he even had the chance to cultivate into an immortal, Li Fusheng was naturally unwilling to accept this fate.
Yet reality was not an anime; shouting in bitter reluctance would not trigger a power-up.
In the end, he failed to hold on and pitched forward flat into the yellow sand. Yet just before his consciousness faded completely, he seemed to hear the faint sound of bells.
When he woke up again, Li Fusheng took a long time to gather his wits.
"Where is this place? The bells I heard earlier weren't auditory hallucinations?" Following that, Li Fusheng thought with a surge of excitement: "As expected, how could someone like me, who discovered the first signs of Spiritual Energy Recovery, kick the bucket just like that? Isn't my fortuitous encounter arriving right now? Could the person who saved me be some senior expert hiding away from the Era of Dharma Decline inside a secret realm?"
"Are you awake? Does anything feel uncomfortable?"
A crisp yet delighted voice interrupted Li Fusheng's fantasies.
"Many thanks to senior for saving—uh..." Turning his head, Li Fusheng realized the speaker was a young girl of around fifteen or sixteen. She had a head of red hair, with two long strands on either side gathered and tied back with her ponytail. Her eyes were a mysterious, faint shade of purple.
"What are you talking about?" Seeing the person on the bed speaking words she couldn't understand, the girl asked with a puzzled expression.
Li Fusheng had no time to reply to her. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly as he roared internally: *Where on earth did this send me? No, wait, what she's speaking sounds like the language from over in Sakura.*
Though he couldn't understand what the girl was saying, Li Fusheng could easily recognize her linguistic system.
After all, what college student didn't have a roommate who liked researching foreign languages late into the night?
The problem was, he had gotten into trouble in Kunlun. Regardless of whether he was currently inside a secret realm or not, he shouldn't have wound up abroad, right?
Seeing Li Fusheng spacing out, Sara thought to herself: *What a strange fellow, talking in such weird gibberish.*
With that, she trotted out of the room.
Not long after, a woman who looked seven or eight parts similar to Sara, yet appeared much more mature, followed Sara back in.
Behind them were several maids carrying some food and water.
After exchanging a few words, it was clear neither side could understand the other's meaning, but relying on hand gestures, Li Fusheng managed to understand that they were asking if he felt any discomfort and urging him to eat some food.
"Ah, arigatou!" Racking his brains to recall how to say thank you, Li Fusheng finally managed to utter a phrase that Saya and Sara could understand.
After exchanging a few polite pleasantries, they took their leave so as not to disturb Li Fusheng's rest.
"Mother, he can speak. Why was he saying all those things we couldn't understand earlier?" Sara asked, looking up curiously at her mother beside her.
Saya stroked Sara's little head and guessed, "Perhaps he had just woken up and his mental state hadn't fully recovered yet. Alright, go play by yourself; I still have matters to attend to."
Leaving Sara behind, Saya returned to the council hall.
"Lord Queen, how is that young man's condition?" a man in the hall asked after offering a bow.
"He has regained consciousness and is currently eating," Saya said, intending to return to the matters at hand.
Hearing this, the man who spoke didn't press further. He had merely been inquiring about the person they had rescued together.
However, a man sitting in the closest seat to Saya's left had no intention of dropping the subject.
His plans were about to reach a critical juncture, and the sudden appearance of a stranger made him deeply wary. He could not allow that inexplicable fellow to interfere with his hard work.
"Lord Queen, our Loulan is located deep in the Land of Wind's desert; outsiders rarely ever come here. Furthermore, it has only been a few years since the outside world went through the Second Great Ninja War. This subordinate believes that person is likely a mountain bandit or rogue, harboring malicious intentions toward Loulan. I implore the Lord Queen to banish him."
"You exaggerate, Minister An Lushan. The other party is merely an ordinary youth," Saya shook her head and said softly.